PERFORMANCE/CABARETS
Family Fun Day!
Sunday April 25, 10 am-12 pm, Free
Fixt Point Studio, 1550 Queen Street West
This year, Family Fun Day serves up entertaining storytelling and raucous noisemaking! We are joined by Cammy Lee, who was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario. In writing children’s stories, Cammy draws from her own experience growing up as a very visible minority in a small southern Ontario town. She hopes that her stories and accompanying illustrations will entertain and delight young readers from all walks of life. Clare Nobbs loves telling stories to listeners of any and all ages. She is equally comfortable sharing songs and finger play in a room filled with 6 year-olds as with presenting storytelling and communication workshops to groups of adults. To round out the morning, Drum Artz Canada will provide Family Fun Day participants with boom whackers, egg shakers, plastic buckets, tambourines, bells and other small instruments to create percussive harmony! Drum Artz Canada is committed to making music and arts programming accessible to all people, with a focus on children.
So The Story Goes
By Swell
Tuesday April 27, 8 pm, $12-$20 s/s
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street
Advance Tickets: Toronto Women’s Bookstore, 73 Harbord Street
SweLL is the (re)iteration of Taste This, notorious Vancouver-based queer performance troupe that co-authored Boys Like Her: Transfictions. With over a decade of artistic experience and numerous books, CDs, performance, video and radio works to their individual credit, “cultural agitator and fab femme (NOW)” Anna Camilleri “natural-born storyteller (Globe and Mail)” Ivan E. Coyote and “musical genius (Xtra)” Lyndell Montgomery initiated SweLL to create So The Story Goes, for which they are joined by visual artist Leslie Peters whose work has been described as “abstract colour-field paintings (Globe and Mail).”
A lot has changed since Taste This exploded onto the cultural scene, but the issues that the early collective inhabited continue to be relevant – questions of gender, sexuality, desire, culture and class, rural and city life and kinship. Home stories. Queer tales. True, except when they’re not. Stories that swell and implode the spaces between cultural institutions and queer landscapes; between female and male; between tightly produced performance and kitchen table talk.
Organized and co-presented by Red Dress Productions. Co-sponsored by CAW Ontario Queer Caucus, CUPE Ontario Pink Triangle Committee, OPSEU Rainbow Alliance and Steel Pride, Local 1998. Red Dress Productions gratefully acknowledges production support for SweLL through the Ontario Arts Council Multi-Arts Program.
Pink Ink Zine Launch
Wednesday April 28, 7:30 pm, Free for youth, $5-$10 s/s for adults
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West
Come celebrate Pink Ink’s annual zine launch with writing and ranting by talented queer and trans youth! Hosted by Karine Silverwoman and Joseph Soobram. Pink Ink is a weekly creative writing drop-in facilitated by queer community artist and activist Karine Silverwoman. Pink Ink is a program of Supporting Our Youth and Sherbourne Health Centre and is sponsored by the Toronto Arts Council.
Stick around for Elle Niño, co-founder and DJ of queer hip hop jam Yes Yes Y’all, spinning hip hop, R&B, reggae, electro and 90’s classics. This is an all ages event – everyone’s invited!
Organized and co-presented by Pink Ink.
From Margin to Centre
Friday April 30, 7:30 pm, $5-$15 s/s
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street
Adopted, queer, female, sex worker, of colour, missing, HIV positive, poor – all of these ‘marginal’ identities and experiences take centre stage in tonight’s program.
Jewish, queer community artists and activists Karine Silverwoman and Alexis Mitchell dedicate their piece Fifty Plus Women to the missing women in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Fifty Plus Women is a collaborative performance that incorporates song, poetry and landscape to capture the eeriness of the women’s murder and the outrage of the women’s disappearance from public consciousness. This piece is an intimate and sensual expression of personal experience and an exploration of vulnerability and resilience. Spoken word artist, musician and comedian Zena Lord will share an excerpt from her one-woman show Soooooo White. It is a humorous and sometimes painful glimpse into her childhood experiences as a black child growing up in the early sixties, in a white foster home, in a small white town outside of Montreal. She searches to find a place and purpose in a world where she wants to be invisible. This piece is an intimate portrait of identity that artfully weaves spoken word, stand-up comedy and music to unfold a story of self-acceptance. Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, aka Belladonna, is a prolific word slinger, working in the arts as a playwright, director, vocalist and performer. Belladonna will be performing works from her repertoire and a reading from Oh Sudanah, a new play in development that examines patterns of HIV infection in small communities. Visiting artist Ami Mattison, from Michigan, is described as “a spoken word force to be reckoned with” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and “Defiant, poignant and straightforward, Mattison’s work hits you where you live and cuts to the very core with a razor sharp edge of rage at the policies of exclusion, apathy and greed that permeate our society… Mattison tackles the issues of poverty, homophobia, gender issues and civil rights with an unparalleled ferocity that challenges even the most stalwart of opposition (Out and About).” Come and hear what all the fuss is about!
Mayworks thanks the Canada Council for the Arts Visiting Foreign Artist Program, for making Ami Mattison’s presence possible.
It Will Work!
Saturday May 1, $10-$15 s/s
Doors: 7:30 pm | Show: 8:30 pm
The Garrison, 1197 Dundas Street West
Mayworks invites everyone to the closing night of the festival to celebrate 25 years with an unforgettable May 1st extravaganza! This year, we mark a historic day by shining the spotlight on the struggles, successes and strength of working class peoples, migrants, undocumented and temporary workers, by joining No One Is Illegal-Toronto and the Canadian Labour Congress Ontario Region in presenting musicians, dancers and artists who will ignite the stage with dance, words and music to provoke thinking as well as dancing and laughter! It will work!
Our line-up begins with Jamaican-born activist, art educator and spoken word artist/dub poet Deidre “DLishus” Walton who is known for her passionate and humorous performances that are delivered with unique rhythmic finesse. Joining us again is MataDanZe, an independent Toronto based interpretative dance group that will perform No One’s Con. Next up will be Mama D, whose powerful tenor voice will narrate stories to tunes that challenge all the rules of songwriting and work. Also presented will be the energetic vibes of LAL, a collective of musicians that describe their truly distinctive sound as a fusion of international folk and electronic protest music. Joined by acclaimed bassist Brandy Disterheft , the celebrated acoustic duo Marinda and Solari will showcase their unique sound that can be described as a blend of world-folk with jazz. From there, Red Slam Collective (Spoken Lyricism which Arranges Meaning) will present a multi-disciplinary set, made up of poetic song-stories infused with hip hop, rez blues, powwow reggae and drum talk. Appearances can be deceiving, and Toronto based artist Humble The Poet has used every misconception and assumption about him to amplify his message to the masses. We will also be joined by Amai Kuda, a singer/songwriter whose name means ‘mother to the will of the creator’ in the southern African Shona language. Our MC will be Deena Ladd of the Workers Action Centre, and we will close out the night with a local DJ!
Co-organized and co-presented by No One Is Illegal-Toronto and Canadian Labour Congress Ontario Region. This celebration follows the May 1, No One Is Illegal! National Day of Action. For more information on No One Is Illegal’s Day of Action, check out toronto.nooneisillegal.org/MayDay. Also, to find out more about G8/G20 organizing visit peoplessummit2010.ca.
Future Folk
By Sulong Theatre Collective
Sunday May 2, 2 pm, $5-$10 s/s
Fixt Point Studio, 1550 Queen Street West
Over the course of 45 minutes, the play Future Folk will allow the audience to live through the 24 months of service required by Filipino ‘nannies’ under Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP).
Dedicated to the development of the Filipino-Canadian artistic community, Sulong Theatre Collective, consisting of Karen Ancheta, Aura Carcueva, Romeo Candido, and Catherine Hernandez, has created a jaw-dropping, heart-breaking play about the strength and dignity of female caregivers under the notorious LCP. Using traditional Filipino folk elements such as dance and music, the lives of these remarkable women come alive with every foot stomp and every chant. All it takes are three malong (traditional, hand-woven skirt), four of the most talented Filipino artists in the city and thousands of years of tradition.
The play will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Martha Ocampo, founding member of Caregiver Connections Education and Support Organization and with panelists Filipina Aldaba from the Independent Workers Association, Pura Velsco, a former domestic worker and organizer with the Caregiver Action Centre and Nancy Prieto of Migrante.
Sponsored by Caregivers Action Centre.
